


Receiving Transmission

by FlowerCrownOfPoppy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Gore, Prophetic Dreams, jon's not having a good time but what else is new, jonah being a bastard as usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24657091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlowerCrownOfPoppy/pseuds/FlowerCrownOfPoppy
Summary: Jonathan Sims doesn't sleep. Hasn't since before The Change, before —Before a lot of things.He's starting to dream again, though, and he doesn't like what he sees.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Receiving Transmission

**Author's Note:**

> Had this little idea running around my brain for the past month or so, decided to quickly get it out before my swiss cheese brain forgot. Skip to the end notes for content warnings.

Jonathan Sims doesn't sleep. Hasn't in — days? Weeks? Years? Time doesn't work right, here. Hasn't in. Well. Hasn't.  
  
He thinks about that while climbing a staircase that curls ever upward in a spiral. Yet the Spiral is curiously absent, despite the seemingly endless ascent, and the Vast — well. Where he'd expect it to lurk underneath these precarious steps, waiting for a rusty bolt to finally break and send him tumbling — the Vast isn't, either. The only other force present is a gentle tug on his bones compelling him onward.  
  
There's a weightlessness to his ascent. His steps make no sound and corrugated metal and iron aged like this, it should creak. It should moan. It doesn't. The Vast and the Spiral and all the others are absent because they can't pierce the heart of this place.   
  
Jon hasn't slept in a God's age but he does dream, and he dreams of this: the Panopticon. The heart of the Eye, Beholding's crowned jewel, a horrid throne that Elias Bouchard comfortably sits atop.

Elias. One second he's a thought, the next he's a smiling figure backlit in the room.  
  
_(The room?)  
  
_Jon doesn't remember entering a room. He doesn't remember the staircase ending at all.  
  
Elias's hand rests politely on the back of a familiar chair. Unease coils in the pit of Jon's gut at the sight of it; it's the same blasted one he used to sit in when taking statements but something's wrapped around it. A _lot_ of somethings, actually, slender and dark as they loop around the legs and armrests. The otherworldly glow that comes from everywhere and nowhere does little to illuminate their matte surface.  
  
"Hello, Jon." Elias's tone is casual, relaxed. His smile widens a touch as he says, "My, how long it's been since we were face to face. Dare I say you look positively glowing with vigor? It must be your new diet."  
  
Jon groans. Even in his dreams he can't escape the grating mockery of his former boss.  
  
"If this weren't a hallucination, you would be —"

"Dead right now. Yes." Elias's head tilts just so, gaze vulpine and expectant. "But would I _really_?"

"I don't know, Jonah," Jon replies, voice dripping honey-sweet with mirrored mockery, "I suspect you don't either but believe me when I say I have _every intention_ of finding out." He takes a step forward, lips curling in a wry smile full of hate. "Theories need to be tested rigorously, don't they?"

Elias — no, _Jonah_ chuckles, amused and glinting wicked in that ethereal light as his hand slides away from the chair. Jon realizes with a second glance that the strange black cords appear to be electric cables. 

"Come now, Jon. Threats were never really your style, were they?” Jonah gestures at him with a smooth roll of his wrist. “Though they do add a certain charm to your haggard messiah aesthetic."

Ah, backhanded compliments. Classic Jonah. Jon takes another step forward and Beholding be damned, dream logic be damned, he _will_ find a way to make this bastard hurt.

"You know why you're here, Jon," Jonah says, stepping behind the chair as if displaying a shiny new car, "I'm just . . . well, I guess you could say I'm but a humble witness." He descends into a satisfied hiss at the end that would've chilled Jon's blood a lifetime ago. Now all it does is ignite his rage anew, sparking a fresh wave of desire to wrap his hands around that pale neck and squeeze and squeeze until the grin is gone and the eyes are empty.

Still, Jon knows. Try as he might the truth will always take root in the core of his soul. He shudders, stopping mid-stride.

"You're mad if you think I'll do it." He stares at the chair, shaking his head to combat the trembling in his limbs. When did that start happening? "I still have free will, dammit, I would _never_." He stammers and starts to walk again, steady and slow. He doesn't want to. He tries to stop. 

He can't because this isn't his dream and never was. It's _Jonah's._

"You will." Quieter, devoid of his signature pompous amusement, Jonah watches. The cables shift of their own accord and begin to hum. All at once the chair feels so very _alive,_ a horrid biomechanical trap blooming open for its chosen host. As the cables unfurl the chair takes on a far more wicked silhouette, the hungry mouth of some otherworldly squid parting to swallow Jon whole.

With horror he realizes the hunger is mutual. Every part of him _aches_ from trying to resist that siren call, its static susurrations promising to carry him beyond the limits of soft flesh and fragile bone.

"Deep down this is the only end that will make sense to you,” Jonah continues, “Every choice you made, all the horrors you witnessed, finally culminating in _this_."

It's not an end, not really. That would be too kind, too merciful, and he's been so _bloody important_ to the Ceaseless Watcher lately, hasn't he? Wandering the wasteland, soaking up fear like a sponge, feeding it to his god. Watching and storing and _growing._

"Why?" Yeah, Jon sounds a bit panicked, but all things considered he's well earned it. "What could you possibly get out of this, Jonah?" He swallows hard as as he nears the chair. A horrible cocktail of terror and inhuman exaltation courses through every vein in his useless body and untangling one from the other is no longer possible.

(It hasn't been for a while and that truth kills him in its own way, too.)

"The same thing I always get, Archive." Jonah's voice drifts in from behind him, above him, all around. "Power."

Jon's fingers are shaking so badly they scrabble at the armrests. The more he fights the more quickly he seems to go, heaving himself into the chair with a whimper caught in his throat. He can't see anything at this angle but 3 horrible facts seep into his mind.

One: electrical cables usually don't have long wicked spikes coming out of them.

Two: the occipital lobes are located in the back of the head.

Three: he's going to feel every second of it.

"Oh, don't be such a baby, Jon." Jonah wanders back into view as the cables shift behind Jon's head, coiling in anticipation. "I'm sure it'll only hurt for a moment." His smile widens into a victorious grin. "Probably." 

It happens so quickly after Jonah's last word that Jon's left blindsided by it, the sheer force of how those spikes punch with unnerving precision into his skull. He screams but the sound doesn't quite leave his lungs. They might be bursting, he's not sure, can't be sure of anything with white hot _agony_ searing down his neck to the rest of him in a clap of static-laced thunder. Nerves recoil. A cold beyond cold flushes through his system, so freezing he can't feel his hands clawing at the armrests or the rivulets of tears spilling down his cheeks.

His limbs are lead and his mind is a howling gale of white noise as the cables wind around his limbs. Tightly. Tighter still, and there’s a possessiveness to it that Jon's no longer in the frame of mind to mull on.

There’s one more split second of lucidity where he's aware he's sobbing, aware of the futile, panicked thudding of his heart, then the spikes finally pierce all the way through bone. They puncture the tender maters encasing his brain and still push further. This, Jon can’t feel, but he sees outside himself and can’t look away and he _can’t take it anymore —_

When the spikes finally reach their mark, everything blinks out like a blown fuse.

**Sleep well in your cocoon, dear Archive.**

_The Archive briefly remembers it had a name beyond this one. There's no point in trying to dig for it now; what was must be tossed to the side. What was will not sustain. The past is irrelevant to metamorphosis, to Becoming, so now it's time to sleep soundly and wake up born anew, inescapable and infinite —_

Jon stops dreaming and crumples on the ground, gasping and retching. His head pounds and his stomach spasms violently. The pain’s dull, thank god, not the sharpness of something horrific lancing through his skull. No cables, no fucking _Jonah_ , just good old fashioned nerves in Jon’s body telling him to keep still.

That’s his name, right. He’s Jon. Jonathan Sims, not — not that —

“Fuck,” he chokes out, wishing so badly he had it left in him to cry. Crying was never his thing, really, not a fan of it, but he’d give practically anything right then to be able to do it. Instead he lays there and waits for what’s left of the world to stop spinning.

He’s not sure how long it takes. By the time he picks himself up, one of the eyes in the sky has swiveled to look down on him, curious and oddly reminiscent of a dog pawing at its master.

“Oh, piss off,” Jon grunts, beginning his unsteady trek down the hill.

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING: graphic depictions of brain trauma/surgery (sort of?), loss of identity, loss of bodily autonomy. Also Jonah being a skeevy little creep in general.
> 
> There's going to be another chapter of this that's far more spicy and I promise you it's probably not what you're thinking. Probably.


End file.
